Ernest Aris

(22 April 1882 - 14 April 1963, UK)

The Cadbury Cococubs (Daily Express, 20 July 1935)

Ernest Aris was a British author and illustrator of children's books, and designer of toys and postcards. He was born Alfred Ernest Walter George Aris in Islington, London, and attended the School of Art in Bradford and the Royal College of Art in London.

As a commercial artist, Aris made designs for cigarette cards, postcards, toys, jigsaw puzzles and games. He was also a specialized charcoal portrait artist. He wrote and drew children's stories from 1909. He worked under pseudonyms like Robin A. Hood and Dan Crow, and illustrated the work of writers like Beatrix Potter.

Aris was the designer of a set of animal characters that were distributed with a new line of Cadbury's Cocoa in 1934. The 'Cadbury Cococubs' and the Cadbury Cococub Club were a huge success and also had their own daily comic strip in the national and provincial press for a while.